Dang, I think I got it backwards! Firefox on Palm Pre…

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There is this test call the Acid3 Test, and it is designed to test a web browser’s compliance with web standards, with an emphasis placed on Document Object Model and JavaScript. For an operating system based on web standards, you might think that webOS would have been scoring fairly highly with the test from day one. Not so, it would seem. In the early days of webOS, the browser scored a pitiful 1/100. With the update to webOS 1.3.1, the browser scored a 73/100 – better, but still not great.

Now, with webOS 1.4 out and about, the browser’s standards compliance has taken another step forward, scoring a 92/100. Obviously, that’s a great step forward as far as the browser is concerned, and we have been receiving reports of better performance and rendering on all manner of sites as a result. The score also vaults the webOS browser (seriously, it needs a name) to the upper tier of mobile browser compliance, topped only by Mobile Safari (100/100), Opera Mini (98/100), Firefox on Maemo (94/100), and Android’s browser (93/100). Of note, Safari and Android are both powered by the same WebKit core that hums underneath the webOS browser (and webOS as an OS), so full standards compliance is a possibility. At the very least, the score is worlds better than before and far ahead of Internet Explorer (Mobile: 5/100, Desktop: 32/100). For 99.999999% of users a score of 92/100 is going to be more than good enough for their browsing experience.

jack87 in our forums also notes that several sites (like costco.com) that previously failed out on webOS are now working. How about you, seeing better rendering now that you’re all 1.4′d up?

EDIT: Anchors (links that lead to a specific point on a page, e.g. comments) work now too! This blogger = happy camper.

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In addition to the slew of enhancements in webOS 1.3.1 that are in the official Palm documentation, enterprising users in the forums have been picking through the newest release of the software, and are finding the minutiae of the changes and enhancements that didn’t make it into Palm’s change log.  Here’s some of what they’ve found:

• The browser now actually scores on the acid3 benchmarking test, getting a whopping 77, up from its previous score of zero.

• The Web browser preferences screen now has an option to use a different default search engine, though Google is currently the only option.

• International dialing options are now in phone preferences

• A new animation is displayed when the phone is powering down.

• Screen captures are only saved in the PNG format, as opposed to saving as both PNG and JPG.

• Layout of UI elements in Photos app has changed, and now appear at the bottom of the screen

• The Photos app is much snappier in general.

• New Sprint TV interface.

• Delete all option available in trash folder in email

• WebOS 1.3.1 has laid the groundwork for video recording by including the Linux binaries needed to record video that is compatible with the stock media player

These are the undocumented changes we’ve seen so far, and there are sure to be more that we’ve yet to find. We’ll keep you updated as they come to our attention!

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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